Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 5)

In my opinion, the authors of the manuscript have taken into account the comments and advice of all reviewers and the manuscript can be recommended for publication in your journal

Author Response

In my opinion, the authors of the manuscript have taken into account the comments and advice of all reviewers and the manuscript can be recommended for publication in your journal.

Response: Thank you for appreciating our effort. Your suggestions have improved our manuscript significantly.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report (Previous Reviewer 3)

After revision, authors provided sufficient justifications for each question. As a result, the manuscript is now accepted in this format, and it also meets the journal's quality standards. 

Author Response

Reviewers 2.

After revision, authors provided sufficient justifications for each question. As a result, the manuscript is now accepted in this format, and it also meets the journal's quality standards. 

Response: Thank you for appreciating our effort. Your suggestions have improved our manuscript significantly.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report (New Reviewer)

Dear Authors,

Congratulations. It is well studied work. The subject of the manuscript entitled “Exogenous application of SA improves physiological and bio- chemical attributes of Morus alba saplings under soil water deficit” fits the profile of Forests journal. The study delivers some interesting results and can be a source of valuable information. However, the authors made shortcomings that should be corrected and/or revised before the publication of this work.

Abstract

Kindly check minor spelling mistake. The abstract needs a better composition of words

Introduction

 Authors should explain why they chose morus alba specie in this work.

Material and methods

Insert the area studied in this experiment if possible

Results

Results are well indicated

Discussion

Could be more detailed. The lines should be more focused for highlighting the important finding of this work

References

Strengthen the part of the discussion with 2 or 3 new references

Conclusion

Minor language issues must be addressed to improve quality of the MS.

 

Comments for author File: Comments.docx

Author Response

Reviewers 3.

Dear Authors,

Congratulations. It is well studied work. The subject of the manuscript entitled “Exogenous application of SA improves physiological and bio- chemical attributes of Morus alba saplings under soil water deficit” fits the profile of Forests journal. The study delivers some interesting results and can be a source of valuable information. However, the authors made shortcomings that should be corrected and/or revised before the publication of this work.

Response: Thank you for appreciating our work. We have extensively revisited the article for language and presentation.

Abstract

Kindly check minor spelling mistake. The abstract needs a better composition of words

Response: The correction has been done in the revised version.

Introduction

 Authors should explain why they chose morus alba specie in this work.

Response: Previous studies have shown that Morus alba is susceptible to drought stress and decreases the biomass production under high water stress. Being a multipurpose species, finding solution for enhancing species tolerance at sapling stage was a matter of great concern. This point has been explicitly added in the introduction section.

Material and methods

Insert the area studied in this experiment if possible

Response: Information has been added in the final version.

Results

Results are well indicated

Response: Your suggestions and comments are well received.  

Discussion

Could be more detailed. The lines should be more focused for highlighting the important finding of this work.

Response: The correction has been done in the revised version.

References

Strengthen the part of the discussion with 2 or 3 new references

Response: New reference has been added in the revised version.

Conclusion

Minor language issues must be addressed to improve quality of the MS.

Response: The language correction has been done in the revised version

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The subject of the work is very interesting, relevant, well designed since climatic alterations are already being responsible more frequent extreme events, such as drought periods, which negative influences the growth of forest plants. However, it is necessary to make some corrections throughout the text to improve the quality of the presentation.

Comments for author File: Comments.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript entitled "Enhancement of physio-biochemical and antioxidant enzyme attributes of Morus alba young saplings through exogenous application of salicylic acid under water deficit treatment" reports the use of salicylic acid as water deficit treatment for M. alba young saplings. Their data were supported with appropriate analyses known for plant response under abiotic stress such as growth, physiological and biochemical parameters, gas exchange measurements, and enzyme activities. The results are well presented.

 

The following points need to be addressed/modified:

1.    Line 103 to 105, re-write the aim of your work, not well presented

2.    Remove the  borders around the figures (1 to 3)

3.    Correct the space between the number and its unit, sometimes you wrote 1.0mM and others 1.0 mM, change it in all the MS

 

4.    Line 394 “Water scarcity”, your aim is water deficit, it is confusing, change it 

Reviewer 3 Report

The manuscript “Enhancement of physio-biochemical and antioxidant enzyme attributes of Morus alba young saplings through exogenous application of salicylic acid under water deficit treatment", is of interest to readers and workers in the agriculture field. The authors assessed the effect of salicylic acid on drought stress in Morus alba L. in which plants were exposed to different water deficit treatments along with a foliar spray of SA. They found that the SA application improved the physio-biochemical response in plants under water deficit. The work methodology is appropriate to the objectives that the authors have set themselves. All the sections are informative and adequate to the reader's expectative. Overall, the idea is good, but the manuscript language needs to be modified.

Reviewer 4 Report

Title

I suggest something more concise that reflects your main results. For example: Exogenous application of salicylic acid increases physio-biochemical and antioxidant enzyme attributes of Morus alba under water stress.

 

Abstract

Please improve your English. You need to define: 1) a justification of the problem to be investigated, 2) the goal of your work, 3) Methods, 4) Main results, 5) A conclusion and implications of your results. Currently point 1) is too general. Please be specific for your species. Point 2) in not well written. Point 3) is clear. Point 4) Clear but not well written. Point 5) Be specific with your species.

 

Keywords

36: Please replace repeated keywords that are already in the title.

 

Introduction

This section describes the typical responses of plants to water stress. I think that those responses can be easily find in any book of plant physiology. Authors need to communicate something new. From references 11 to 28 (Lines 53 to 78) authors says nothing about responses of M. alba under water stress.

L43-44: Do you have a reference to support an increase of 3 to 9° C in temperature? Is quite high.

L81-93: Ok, but what about the effects of SA on M. alba? You have said nothing about your species. Is it tolerant or susceptible to drought? What type of physiological mechanisms have been reported to face drought?

L94-102: This description in too basic. We need to know what are the responses of M. alba to water stress and what is the effect of SA on alleviating this response.

L103-105: I do not understand your goal. You do not evaluate the effectivity of water stress on plants responses. What you do is to evaluate the responses of M. alba plants under different treatments. Please consider a new redaction of your goal. Is it possible to state a hypothesis? What are your expectations?

 

Methods

My main criticism here is that authors simply refer to other paper to describe their experiment. This makes this experiment not replicable.

 

L111-112: How tall are were your seedlings at the beginning of the experiment? Are seedlings of this condition (small-large seedlings) sensitive to drought?

L115: If my surmise is correct, you have 70 seedlings in total. This gives a total of 10 seedlings per treatment which is too low to draw robust conclusions.

L123: Please give details on your water treatment. We cannot spend time in searching the paper by Rasheed et al. and all those papers you mentioned later in the text.

L125: How did you homogenize foliar application of SA? Did seedlings receive the same amounts? How did you check it?

L126: Please provide a schematic figure of your experiment. I cannot guess how you applied your treatments. Frequency, dose, etc. Is a period of 90 days enough to detect differences in morphological attributes?

L130: Why did you count the number of leaves? It would have been better to calculate leaf area.

L131: ‘Trial’ and not ‘trail’. This is just an example of why you need to improve your English.

L180: I wonder how did you run your ANOVA for traits that do not follow normality assumption. For example, the number of leaves I a ‘counting’ and you should have used a generalized linear model with binomial distribution. The ‘root-shoot ratio’ is a quotient that should have normalized by using the arcsin transformation. Similarly, WUEi is a quotient between photosynthesis and stomatal conductance. Please provide much more detail on tour statistical analyses.

 

Results

 

My main criticism here is that authors made comparisons between treatments that are not clear. Sometimes they compare against CK, but then they compare between groups of treatments (e.g. HS+1.0 versus HS). Unfortunately, authors do not mention any kind of analysis for this situation. They should have run orthogonal contrasts analysis.

L190: According to you, what are ‘water deficit treatments’? MS and HS? Clarify.

L190-191: The highest reduction in height was between HS versus MS+1.0. Please revise. Do you consider that MS+1.0 is a water deficit treatment?

L191-192: Yes, but there were also reductions in HS+0.5 which were similar to that in MS. I am confused with the way you compare your results. Please clarify your statistical analyses.

L193: Root to shoot ratio was superior only in HS. Values for CK and MS were statistically similar. Then, why you say that this trait was enhanced in MS and HS? Respect to what? Clarify.

L195-196: Applications of SA improved growth and biomass with respect to what? What I see is that CK seedlings have the highest values. Please be clearer when comparing your treatments.

L198: What do you mean with ‘both’ treatments? I see 7 treatments. If you decide to group well- watered versus water stressed treatments and then compare them, you should have run an analysis of ‘orthogonal contrasts’. If you are not familiar with it, ask for advice.

L202-270: I have the same difficulty as above. Why you compare against CK both also against HS and MS? Please run orthogonal contrast analysis to group your treatments as ‘well- watered’ versus ‘water- stressed’. You can not simply compare from your Tukey test.

 

Discussion

You are basically repeating results but still do not provide a rationale of the possible mechanisms underlying the mechanisms of M. alba to face water stress. Also, you mention a bunch of papers referring to other species. All plants respond similarly. You need to discuss comparing studies with your species. Is it because there is little information on responses of M. alba to water stress? If so, then you have the opportunity to ‘fill the gap’.

 

Conclusion

 

L402-403: Based on the above-mentioned comments, I am not sure that SA at 1.0 nM is better than SA at 0.5 nM.

 

L404-405: This is not a conclusion of your study. 

Reviewer 5 Report

The authors conducted a large amount of research, but unfortunately the manuscript of the article does not explain why these studies were planned.

The methodology is described rather superficially and it is not indicated what exactly was the subject of analysis, saplings (?), as indicated in the captions to the figures (Figure 2. The average values of MDA (A), H2O2 (B), O2 (C), and EL% (D) under MS and HS treatments and foliar spray of SA in M. alba saplings ???), whether it is possible that the leaves of saplings were selected for analysis, if leaves, then what tier, leaves on shoots differ in age.

The authors did not explain why they chose two, rather high concentrations of Sodium salicylate solution for the experiments? It is not clear from the text of the manuscript what was the reason for the timing of the treatment of leaves of Morus alba young saplings (on the 7th and 45th day)?

The list of references is overloaded with old works and with the exception of references to original methods, this is not justified.

The authors do not successfully compare the results of their research with the works of other authors, conducted, in particular, on soybeans, wheat, and corn.

 

In my opinion, the work requires significant revision and in this form cannot be recommended for publication.